During the past several years, coffee and tea consumption has been increasing, as demonstrated by the rapidly increasing number of specialty coffeehouses and teashops around the nation. Among other things, studies have shown that tea has several substances that can benefit people's health. The surge in popularity has been particularly noteworthy in the convenience store market through the growth in sales and consumption of "ready-to-drink" beverages. Consumers shopping in convenience stores, like consumers in specialty shops, appreciate a high quality, flavorful product at a reasonable price. Thus, the invention described herein is directed to a brewing system that provides fresh, high quality, flavorful beverage products and affords numerous conveniences to consumers and owners.
Traditionally, coffee or tea machines, both for personal and business use, brew large quantities (e.g. pots) of coffee or tea that are designed to serve multiple individuals. Because these beverages are made in such large quantities and are usually maintained in a brewed, liquid state, their flavor and consistency degrade over time making the beverages less desirable or even undrinkable, and thus, the remaining pot of coffee or tea typically gets discarded. With the increasing prices of these commodities, the wasted coffee or tea results in significant amounts of wasted money.
With these prior art machines, it is inconvenient or impossible to brew smaller, fresh individual servings of coffee or tea. Even if a prior art machine is designed to brew small batches (rather than multiple cups), the machines typically require the user to invest a significant amount of time and effort to clean the components of the machine from the previous pot of coffee or tea, to attempt to measure the proper amount of the coffee or tea to be brewed, and to wait for the entire brewing process to complete for a single serving. As indicated, typical prior art machines do not have components that are suitable for properly brewing smaller quantities of beverages.
In addition, if the user wishes to flavor his drink with any suitable additive (such as cream, sugar, honey, syrup, fruit flavoring, etc.), he will have to keep a supply of the additive nearby and add it to the cup as he prepares his drink. This can present significant problems where space is not readily available, and it increases costs by requiring the maintenance, cleaning, and inventory of not only the additives but the various equipment needed to store and mix the additives. These problems directly affect the profitability for any retailer (especially retailers such as convenience stores) attempting to provide drinks for consumers.
Some machines have attempted to overcome some of these shortcomings. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,211,342 (to Jamgochian et al.), and 4,649,809 (to Kanezashi), describe machines that are capable of preparing individual servings of various beverages including hot or cold coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and cold soda. Furthermore, these machines permit the consumer to choose from a variety of items to add to the beverage to alter the flavor of the drink.
Unfortunately, these machines are relatively complicated, and typically require a substantial investment of money to purchase or lease, and maintain; thus making them impractical if not impossible for small businesses to use them. Moreover, these machines typically occupy a relatively large amount of space, making them inconvenient (and less profitable) for use in businesses such as convenience stores and restaurants where space is crucial.
In addition, the mixing of the beverage additives in such prior art machines typically occurs at some stage prior to final dispense of the beverage. This increases the possibility of decreasing the quality of subsequent beverages from the machine (such as by flavor contamination by different and unwanted additives), and correspondingly makes cleaning of those areas more crucial and typically more difficult.
Another prior art machine (U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,883 to Usherovich) teaches a smaller brewer that brews both hot or cold drinks. However, this machine, much like traditional brewers, suffers from various shortcomings, including the inability to properly and rapidly brew single-servings, and also suffers from the inability to be easily cleaned or maintained.
To overcome the shortcomings of prior art brewing machines, the invention described herein preferably is a compact, easily used and maintained, brewing machine that freshly and quickly brews a single serving of tea or coffee. Each time a user or customer activates the preferred machine, the machine places tea leaves or coffee grounds in a brewing chamber, adds hot water, and brews the tea or coffee. Furthermore, the invention preferably permits the brewing of either hot or cold beverages as well as enables the user to select from a wide variety of flavors when choosing his single serving of coffee or tea. The preferred embodiment of the invention is also programmable to, among other things, assign unique flavor combinations, brewing times, water level, and other attributes to each beverage selection button. In addition, the invention preferably includes a display screen that displays messages, such as instructing a consumer on how to make his cup of tea or coffee, and instructing and assisting the machine's owner or operator to modify and program the operation and other aspects of the machine (such as by leading the owner through a series of menu choices).